Friday, July 19, 2019

The Azure cloud solutions from Microsoft is quickly becoming the go-to Cloud platform for many companies. While AWS leads the retail space and Google Cloud Platform is still in the middle, Microsoft's Azure has emerged as a winner by attracting both big and small companies into its Cloud platform. This means the demand of people familiar with Azure architecture and Azure Cloud products and services is rising and providing some of the excellent career opportunity for Developers and DevOps who are interested in Cloud Computing. It's also very rewarding, the average salary for Azure Solution Architect in silicon valley is around 145,000 USD which is highly competitive. It's one of the highest paying technology jobs. In short, Azure is currently presenting a very good opportunity for senior developers.
A good way to tap into this opportunity is to pass Microsoft's official Azure Architecture Technologies Certification Exam (AZ-300) and become an Azure Cloud architect. This exam will not only help you to learn Azure fundamentals and architecture but also give you the recognition and skills you need to get that Azure architect job you dream of.

The only challenge is passing this exam, which is, to be honest very challenging because Microsft Azure is still evolving and that's why requirements of this exam are kept changing. The only way to pass this exam is to choose the right resources like best Azure cloud courses and mock test and actively read Azure documentation, apart from doing a lot of hands-on labs on the Azure cloud platform dashboard.

If you are preparing for Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Associate certification or aspire to become Azure architect, you have come to the right place. In this article, I am going to share some of the best online courses from Udemy, Whizlabs, Pluarlsight, and Coursera to pass Microsoft's Azure Solutions Architect Associate certification exam with code AZ-300.

What is Azure Solutions Architect Associate exam?

This is Microsoft's official certification for Azure Architects and test candidate's Azure skils on deployment and configuring infrastructure, implementing workloads and security, creating and deploying apps, implementing authentication and securing data, and develop for the cloud and Azure storage.

Azure architects are familiar with these skill as they are the ones who help clients to translate their business requirements into a secure, scalable, and reliable solution using Azure Cloud technologies. The official title of this exam is Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Associate and exam code are AZ-300.

In order to pass this exam, you need to have a strong foundation in various aspects of IT operations like networking, virtualization, identity, security, business continuity, disaster recovery, and data management. You also need to be good at budgeting and governance as you are going to advise cloud solutions to clients.

Apart from the basic system admin and DevOps skill, you also need to be proficient in Azure administration, Azure development, and DevOps and have expert-level skills in at least one of those domains. The cost of the exam is different in a different country but in the USA it costs around $165.00 USD.

The exam is divided into the following four high-level domains:

Deploy and Configure Infrastructure (25-30%)

Implement Workloads and Security (20-25%)

Create and Deploy Apps (5-10%)

Implement Authentication and Secure Data (5-10%)

Develop for the Cloud and for Azure Storage (20-25%)

And, you need to prepare all of them to get a good score in the exam. Don't leave topics which has a lower percentage.

Here are a couple of useful online courses to pare for Microsoft's Azure Solution Architect exam with code AZ-300. The course is listed in the order I find them useful for preparation and I have tried to recommend courses which are most up-to-date and also updates frequently to cover any changes on certification and Azure itself.

The best part of this course is that it covers everything you need to prepare for Microsoft's Azure Solutions Architect Associate certification and Scott Duffy also keep it up-to-date with any change in syllabus of this exam or any change on Azure Cloud solutions itself, which is the biggest reason I recommend this course.

Talking about social proof this course from Scott Duffy have on average 4.3 ratings from close to 12,015 participate and more than 60,000 students have benefitted from this course.

Nick Colyer is an excellent instructor and it will educate you on the fundamental concepts and principles of the Azure platform and demos will enable you with a hands-on experience using scenarios to empower you in the real world.

Like the previous course, this one is also up-to-date and instructor also keeps it updated depending upon feedback from students, and any changes in exam guides, lab guides, and more!

Anyone who redeems this benefit can use all Pluralsight features available to individual subscribers, including paths, Skill IQ, etc. You can use this handy guide to prepare for the Microsoft AZ-300 exam: Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies with Pluralsight courses.

This article maps each exam objective to a Pluralsight course. It will take you about 60 hours to go through all these courses.

Courtesy of Microsoft and Pluralsight, you can also get access to these courses for FREE! Just follow the instructions here.

4. Microsoft Azure Exam AZ-300 Certification Course by Whizlabs
If you have the regular reader of this blog then you know that I trust Whizlab's course material for certification. I have personally used a lof there mock tests and online courses to prepare for Java certifications, hence I know the quality they provide and this course is no different.

In this Azure certification course, you have 12+ hours of training content which covers 100% of exam syllabus. You also get unlimited access to the course and watch it on your desktop, laptop, mobile and even on TV.

Along with the course, I also recommend their Azure Certification mock tests for AZ-300 exam. This exam simulator contains more than 165 unique questions, divided into 3 full-length mock exams.

The emulator not only allows you to practice these questions but also provides an exhaustive explanation with every question, which adds to your learning. You also get access to reports to assess your strengths & weaknesses and plan your time accordingly in real exam. If you don this mock test and online course with honesty, you have a very good chance to pass the Azure Architect exam.

There Azure AZ-300 practice test also live my expectations. It contains 5 full-length mock exams comprising 275 unique questions. They not only tell you the right answer but also explains why its right and why other answers are wrong. You also get access to intelligent reports to asses your strong and weak areas and cover them before the exam.

In short, a must-do practice test and I highly recommend to all the people who are going for Azure Architect Technology exam with code AZ-300.

That's all about some of the best courses to prepare for Microsoft's Azure Architect Technologies certification with exam code AZ-300. These courses will not only help you to pass the Azure Architect exam but also help you to develop essential skill an Azure Architect should know, which is critical to get the job as Azure Solution Architect in big companies.

Other Certification Resources for IT Professionals and Java Programmers

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like this article then please share with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback, please drop a note.

P. S. - If you are new into the world of Cloud and
looking for some free courses to learn Cloud computing then you can also check out these list of cloud computing courses with Amazon Web Services - Free AWS Courses for Beginners on HackerNoon.